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Obedience, Purity and Love


Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For,

“All men are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
 but the word of the Lord stands forever.”
And this is the word that was preached to you. (I Peter 1:22-25)


          Do we have to come back to this? Why can't we just all get along?
          Oh yes, we have to keep coming back to these essentials. How do we become pure? By obeying the truth. That means submission. Not my will, but God's, even if everything in me screams "I want... I need...I deserve...I demand!" Even if it kills me, not my will but God's. Without this obedience, there is no purity.
         How do we love and love deeply? By being pure, which means by being obedient. We love by being "without wax." It used to be that impure, unloving, unscrupulous pottery vendors would fill in cracks and flaws in their inventory using wax. If you held the cracked pot up, you could see where the wax was because it's where the light shines through.  Of course, we're all cracked pots, but God works miracles. He accepts cracked pots and commands us not to wax ourselves or our love. Our love must be pure clay - no wax allowed.
         So, to love sincerely and deeply, we have to be pure, which means we have to be obedient. Obedient to what or to whom? In the next verses, we are told that man is like grass. The Word of the Lord is living and enduring. It stands forever. Our own word dies. Being obedient to ourselves, even being obedient to our DNA doesn't make us pure. It doesn't give us life. It makes us selfish. Pretending otherwise is applying wax. It's selling a lie that won't hold water, or real love.

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